


i am selfish (i am brave)

by sapphfics



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Divergent Fusion, M/M, implied clizzy because It’s Me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-27
Updated: 2017-09-27
Packaged: 2019-01-06 02:38:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12202206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphfics/pseuds/sapphfics
Summary: “If being Dauntless means I have to be dead inside, then I’m not sure I want to be one.”





	i am selfish (i am brave)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hhwgv](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hhwgv/gifts).



> A fill for [this prompt](https://ladygawain.livejournal.com/84892.html?thread=1343900#t1343900) at the Shadowhunters Prompt Ficathon Round 3. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy!

The morning of the test also falls on the second day of every third month, and as he stands in front of the only mirror in his house, he glances up to see his mother smiling at the dirty scissors in her hand.

“Hey mom, were you scared the day you took your test?”

“No,” She admits and the air around him feels stale. “I was terrified. But then, your father grinned at me as I walked in and suddenly everything was alright again.”

Simon doesn’t remember his father but he still smiles as though he does. He knows that letting her tell him of happier times is self-indulgent - why focus on the past when you could be helping make the future better for all? - but he lets her anyway, because she hardly ever talks about their father. She hardly ever talks.

“Simon, it’s time to go,” His sister, Rebecca, stands in the doorway, ready to walk with him. If he chooses differently, at least he knows she will be there to help his mother, that she can be happy here in a way a part of him knows he could never be.

“You don’t have to come with me. I’m not a baby.” Simon says. He doesn’t mean it, not really, but he knows that Rebecca has better things to do.

“You’re always going to be my little brother, no matter what.” Rebecca says and that’s the end of the discussion.

His mother kisses his cheek to say goodbye and Rebecca gives up her seat on the bus without hesitation. He watches as the large gate that stands to keep out all the evils of the world beyond passes by and thinks of his family. They were made for Abnegation and sometimes he wishes he were the same.

//

“You’re Divergent.”

Simon swallows. “What?”

“You don’t fit one faction, you fit three.” The syringe is ripped from his arm, and Magnus has fear in his eyes. “Simon, you can’t tell anyone. They’ll kill you if they find out.”

“Who? Are you seriously telling me I’m going to get murdered because I don’t fit just one faction?” He clutches his hands onto the sides of his seat and suppresses the urge to pull his knees to his chest. “Is there a war going on that I don’t know about?”

“Yes. There's no time, I’m so sorry.”

He is hurried out the back door and, for a moment, forgets how to breathe.

//

Rebecca doesn’t press about his results, but he still smiles at her as though everything he’s ever known hasn’t just been turned on it’s head.

He takes the knife and lets his blood fall on the coals.

The last time he sees his mother, she smiles as if there is nothing to forgive.

//

He’s not the first to jump from the roof - that honour, of course, goes to Clary - but he is the second.

He bites his tongue to keep himself from screaming as he descends.

“Welcome to hell,” He jokes as he offers Simon a hand to help him up. “I’m Jace, your second and way better looking instructor, and you are?”

“I can tell,” Simon blurts out. “I mean - hi, I’m Simon.”

Before he can make an even bigger fool of himself, Clary is by his side again, steadying his nerves. He tries to push back the image of the dead girl on the roof to the back of his brain, of the boy beside her trying not to cry.

“So, are you her boyfriend then, Simon?” Jace asks. “How cute.”

“Oh no,” Simon says. “I mean, she’s my best friend but she’s not -”

“Trust me,” Clary says. “He’s not my type.”

“Oh really,” A tall girl with the prettiest eyes Simon has ever seen steps out from behind the net, clad in leather trousers and Clary looks as though she may faint. “I’m Isabelle, it’s wonderful to meet you, Clary.”

“Hi -” Clary almost stutters.

Whatever she is about to say is cut off by Valentine making a speech and Simon is grateful, until he hears about the ranking system.

He looks at his score and knows he will not be the first to go.

//

When Hodge Starkweather wakes up screaming with a butter knife shoved in his eye, Simon is the only one who sees Sebastian smiling as the poor man wails as when taken away.

//

He can do nothing but watch as Clary hangs over the pit, watches Valentine count with a disgusting smile on his face, and a small part of him waits for her to fall.

If she falls, he will defy Valentine and try to catch her. Or he will die with her. He won’t her go alone.

“Stop this!” He sees Jace running toward them. “I will not have another initiate die on my watch!”

Valentine glares at Jace but relents.

The second Valentine allows it, Simon and Izzy rush to help up Clary and he bites on his tongue to keep himself from screaming.

She shudders as she finds her footing, but doesn’t speak until Valentine is far from their sight.

“If being Dauntless means I have to be dead inside, then I’m not sure I want to be one.” She whispers.

//

He loses the fight with Camille, and he’s so bruised he almost gets cut and becomes Factionless.

Jace picks him first for capture the flag.

“Dazzle me,” he says and Simon grins.

//

He doesn’t mean to eavesdrop. He swears it.

It’s not his fault if Valentine likes to monologue, and rather loudly at that.

“Ah, Sebastian,” he says. “It’s no surprise that you sister, Clary, was the first to jump. She gets that from me, you know. That curiosity. The strength too, what with the way she hung onto that railing.”

“I know,” Sebastian says. He tries to catch a glimpse of his face, but can only see his blond hair, like Jace’s if he were dragged through various muddy bushes. He looks worse for ware. “I saw her. She’s even more beautiful than I imagined.”

“You know she won’t be getting any favouritism from me,” Valentine says. “No matter how you feel about her.”

“I know,” Sebastian repeats. “To love is to be destroyed.”

Simon doesn't know what to think, and when he tells Clary what he heard, Clary’s hands start shaking.

//

“My mother was factionless by choice. She was Dauntless. When she was murdered I...I knew I had to do better, that I had to escape, that I had to live the life she always said she wanted me to have. So I did. I hid on a train to Amity and never looked back.” She looks at him as though she has just informed him about the end of the world.

“Clary, I’m so -”

“Don’t say that, not now.” Clary snaps and Simon stops talking. “We didn't have a lot, but my mom always refused to pawn this box. Could’ve bought us two weeks worth of food, but she’d never part with it. Sometimes I would see her crying over it, clutching a piece of blond hair, and I think she must’ve known she was going to die because a few days before, she told me that the hair belonged to my brother. His name was Jonathan and he burned alive with my father when he killed himself.”

“So, you think Sebastian is...your brother?” Simon asks. “Clary, this is insane.”

“More insane than a factionless girl surviving Dauntless initiation?”

Simon is still skeptical, but he knows better than to try and reason with her with she looks as though she could burn down the world without a second thought, so they work out a plan.

//

Jace’s fear landscape includes ducks, of all things, and Simon would laugh if he didn’t see the ducks take a chunk out of someone’s skull before descending on them.

He watches Jace run one through with a sword and feels like cheering.

For a second, the smallest hint of a smile crosses Jace’s face, and then Simon sees the gun materialise in his hand.

“Jace, what’s going on?”

The gun fires and Simon watches himself die.

He tries not to think about his corpse when Jace kisses him. Tries to think of another world, in safer clothes and better times.

When Valentine puts the chip in his neck, the grip he has on Simon’s shoulder makes the hairs on the back of Simon’s neck raise.

//

“What do you know of Divergents, Mr Lewis?”

Simon looks up at the head of Erudite, and bites his tongue. “Nothing. May I leave now, Miss Branwell? I was only here to -“

“Yes, Simon.” Her smile makes Simon feel like a canary in sight of a cat. “And please, call me Lydia.”

//

He doesn’t remember much except waking up to find himself holding a gun against Jace’s head.

He gets up and, on impulse, throws a knife.

It goes right through Lydia Branwell’s writing hand.

//

On the train, he finds Jace’s hand in his, and sees Clary and Isabelle holding each-other and feels the stirrings of something like hope.


End file.
